Plus Blog

Vaccination is an emotive business. The furore around the MMR vaccine and autism has shown that vaccination health scares can cause considerable damage: stop vaccinating, and epidemics are sure to follow. But how do scientists decide whether a vaccine and a vaccination strategy are effective and safe? We talk to Paddy Farrington, Professor of Statistics at the Open University. You can also
read the accompanying article.

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Infectious diseases hardly ever disappear from the headlines. If it's not the disease itself that hits the news, then it's the vaccines with their potential side effects. It can be hard to tell the difference between scare mongering and responsible reporting, because media coverage rarely provides a look behind the scenes. How do scientists reach the conclusions they do? How do they predict
how a particular disease will spread, and whether it is likely to mutate into a more dangerous strand? And how do they assess the impact of an intervention like vaccination, and make sure that a vaccine is safe?

Two answer these questions, we have put together a package of five articles, a podcast, and a classroom activity.

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An amateur fractal programmer has discovered a new 3D version of the Mandelbrot set. Daniel White's new creation is based on similar mathematics as the original 2D Mandelbrot set, but its infinite intricacy extends into all three dimensions, revealing fractal worlds of amazing complexity and beauty at every level of magnification.

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Those interested in more about the Mandelbulb and the search for the "true 3D" Mandelbrot including an almost complete history of the last couple of years search may wish to look here http://www.fractalforums.com/

However, I'm wondering if there isn't a typo in the formula given. If it is a direct generalization of complex multiplication using Euler angles, the z-component should be:
-sin(n phi)
and not:
-sin(n theta)
Am I wrong?

LHC set for restart

After over a year of repair works the Large Hadron Collider at CERN may be restarted within the next few days. Scientists will gently prod the giant particle collider back into action, starting by circulating beams of protons at low energies and generating low energy collisions, before slowly firing it up to its full power. It is hoped that eventually
the high energy collisions will generate conditions similar to those right after the Big Bang and shed light on some of the biggest mysteries of the Universe.

To remind yourself of what the LHC is all about, read the Plus articles:

Happy 150th birthday to the Riemann Hypothesis - the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics

It has been 150 years since the mathematician Bernhard Riemann published the conjecture which is now one of the most important unsolved problems in mathematics. The Riemann hypothesis encapsulates humankind's attempt to understand the mysteries of the primes: why there is no apparent pattern in the way the primes are
distributed on the number line. The hypothesis is one of the Clay Mathematics Institute's Millennium Prize Problems — anyone who proves (or disproves) it will receive one million dollars.

What are the chances of winning the lottery? How much of a football team's league position is due to luck and how much is due to skill? What are the chances of a false positive test result in security or medical screening? Which newspaper headlines are telling the truth? Can you spot a scam before you fall for it?